Peter Sinclair takes some claims from climate denialists too seriously. I hope.
On the other hand, he thoroughly shreds some of the more hoary claims of the denialists. Plus he includes clips of everybody’s favorite movie, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Give it a watch, “Flogging the Scientists”:
Gee. Here in Texas we could use a Peter Sinclair film on history, economics and other social studies. Quick!
Tip of the old scrub brush to Tim Lambert at Deltoid.
4 Comments | 
Accuracy, Climate change, climate_change, Global warming, Hoaxes, Science | Tagged: Climate change, Climate Denail Hoaxes, denialism, Flogging the Scientists, Global warming, IPCC, Peter Sinclair, Research, Science, Sea Level Rise | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
This is a story of two cities located within 100 miles of each other in Colorado, in that paradise created by close mountain recreation, clean and clear western vistas, and local, great universities. The question is, does this story tell a tale of urban growth that mistakenly shows up as global warming, or is it a story of wise planning that avoids the harms of global warming — or something else in between, or completely different?
Boulder, Colorado at twilight, at the foot of the Rockies – Wikipedia Image by Phil Armitage
Anthony Watts complained that I don’t read his blog closely enough, or often enough. He may rue the day he made that complaint.
Browsing over there I found a post hidden under a headline, “A UHI Tale of Two Cities.” I say “hidden” because Watts once again falls victim to the Dunning-Kruger syndrome of using an acronym, UHI, which sounds sciency but is in fact confusing to anyone not following the debate closely. I’m science literate, I’ve done research, I’ve done air pollution research, I’ve served state, federal and local governmental bodies working on environmental issues, and “UHI” didn’t ring any bells with me. It’s a MEGO phrase, in other words: My Eyes Glaze Over.
It took five clicks, but I discovered UHI is “urban heat island,” the well-worried-over effect of cities, with all their concrete, asphalt and steel, holding heat longer than surrounding countryside. In some cases, it is hypothesized that these urban heat islands affect or create their own weather. In the airline industry we worried about late afternoon thunderstorms that continued well past historical evening limits (and I suspect airline meteorologists and flight schedulers still worry about the issue, but I’ve been out of it for well over a decade).
For the study of global warming, the issues are simple but important: Do temperature measures made in or near big cities inaccurately show warming that is wholly local, and mislead scientists into thinking there is global warming? Or is some of the supposed heat island effect instead due to global warming? And, if it the urban heat island effect is mostly local, should we worry about it when developing policies to combat global warming and preserve our forests, wildlands and wildlife, wildernesses. oceans, rivers, farmlands and urban areas, and modern life?
Southwest quadrant of Boulder Colorado, showing greenbelt and trails – image from city website with information on greenbelt use and open space regulations, and maps. Boulder’s greenbelt open space and wild lands may get more visitors than nearby Rocky Mountain National Park.
In the post at Watts’s site, this is stated (from Watts? from someone else? Who can tell?):
Conclusion:
We have two weather stations in similarly sited urban environments. Until 1965 they tracked each other very closely. Since then, Fort Collins has seen a relative increase in temperature which tracks the relative increase in population. UHI is clearly not dead.
Watts misses much of the story.
In the middle 1960s and into the early 1970s Boulder, Colorado, made conscious and careful attempts to preserve its environmental quality. In 1967 Boulder created a greenbelt plan that started the processes to preserve an open space belt around the city, to preserve wild lands and to provide a sink for air pollutants and other effects of the city. In the early 1970s the city limited city growth to assure environmental quality.
Alternatives to Growth Oregon (AGO) featured an excerpt from a book detailing several growth-controlling actions by American cities as well and succinctly as anything else I’ve found (excerpted from Better Not Bigger by Eben Fodor)
In 1967, Boulder voters approved one of the nation’s first locally funded greenbelt systems. They used a local sales tax increase of 0.4 percent to finance open space land acquisitions. As of 1998, Boulder had raised $116 million and acquired 33,000 acres of greenways and mountain parks. The greenbelt system serves as a natural growth boundary, defining the limits of the city with open space and parkland. This natural boundary helps to block urban sprawl and “leapfrog” development. The greenbelt has also helped protect the quality of life in Boulder as the city has grown. It is said that more people use the greenbelt system each year than visit nearby Rocky Mountain National Park. As an added measure, Boulder established a building height limitation of 55 feet in 1971 to preserve the view of the Rockies. The city and surrounding county have cooperated on planning and growth-management policies and jointly adopted the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan. A city-county study in 1970 showed the area’s population doubling in 20 years to 140,000. This projection alarmed many residents and prompted discussions about optimum population size. A public opinion survey found that more than 70 percent of respondents favored population stabilization near the 100,000 level.
In November, 1971 Boulder citizens set another first when they placed an initiative on the ballot to create a charter amendment setting a maximum population limit for the city. Voters narrowly defeated the initiative. The defeat may have been partly due to an alternative referendum placed on the same ballot by the city council. This second referendum was approved by 70 percent of voters and directed local government to “take steps necessary to hold the rate of growth in the Boulder Valley to a level substantially below that experiences in the 1960’s.” This important decision has led to a number of experimental growth-management policies that are still being fine-tuned today.
More information on greenbelts, how they work and why they are such a great idea, can be found from the Trust for Public Lands (also here), among other sources.
Fort Collins is a college town, like Boulder, and loaded with people interested in preserving the environment. Colorado State is the state’s Land Grant College (Morrill Act), the official repository of studies of protecting and wisely using the lands of Colorado. But Fort Collins did not create a green belt. Development in Fort Collins follows rules, but rules set by more traditional zoning and protection regulations than Boulder’s green belt.
Exploring Old Town Fort Collins by bicycle – City of Fort Collins photo
Watts’s blog lays the differences in temperatures between Boulder and Fort Collins since 1965 entirely at the feet of rising population, and an assumption that rising population means more concrete, asphalt and steel (Watts writing, or someone else?). Analysis of population growth from any serious statistical viewpoint, comparing Fort Collins-Loveland SMSA against the Boulder MSA (or Denver-Boulder SMSA) is lacking. This is probably more a reminder that Watts’s blog is not engaged in serious scientific analysis global warming from a global view — nor even a national, state or regional view. The comparison is simple, on population and temperature, and probably not sustainable to the point Watts suggests he wants to take it.
The population of the City of Boulder grew less than the population of the City of Fort Collins grew. That appears to be enough for Watts.
Check with the public officials of Boulder, especially those in charge of development and zoning. They’ll let you know in a hurry that Boulder’s slower-than-Fort-Collins growth is intentional. While the Boulder plan technically has no upper limit, it slows growth so that environmental quality can be maintained, especially the greenbelt, with its manifold recreation opportunities.
Fort Collins has a lot of good recreation, too. The Cache de Poudre River offers great river running within 40 minutes of downtown in the summer, and the local National Forests and other public lands offer camping, hiking, hunting, fishing, and I imagine, snowmobiling in winter. There are bike paths through Fort Collins — but not the green, automobile-free style of trails available all around Boulder.
Scouts climbing at Camp Ben DelaTour, outside of Fort Collins – Longs Peak Council BSA photo
Perhaps most important, Fort Collins experiences “leapfrog” development that Boulder specifically spurned 40 years ago. New businesses cluster along roads into town, frequently just out of the city limits and beyond the zoning rules of the city, at least until the city annexes the land and its problems. This is the traditional growth model for American cities. What it ensures is urban sprawl and suburban growth. It also virtually guarantees that there will be no preserved greenlands around the city. Green land, rural or more wild, get developed in sprawl.
Here’s the question Watts and his collaborators don’t deal with: How much of Boulder’s cooler climate is due to the greenbelt, and how much due to the striving for wise development instead of sprawl? Considering Boulder’s proximity to Denver and explosive growth there, the fact that Boulder’s climate is cooler than Fort Collins’s, according to Watts, suggests even more strongly that tough protection of the environment can work wonders, if not near-miracles.
Who is Anthony Watts to claim that Boulder’s cooler climate is not the result of careful planning to preserve the environment, initiated by Boulder’s visionaries 50 years ago?
Perhaps more critically: Doesn’t Boulder demonstrate that planning that stops global warming, is feasible, practical, economical, and perhaps, preferable? Doesn’t the greenbelt, and lower temperatures, suggest that we can kill the urban heat island effect, to the betterment of local living standards?
There is a moral to the story of development in Fort Collins and Boulder, Colorado. That moral has very little, if anything, to do with heat islands. It is instead a model to tell us that planning to avoid environmental disaster is the wise thing to do. Anthony Watts has the charts to prove it.
Notes:
Update, James Madison Day (3-16-2010): Watts still doesn’t get it. In a post today he wrote:
My last few posts have described a new method for quantifying the average Urban Heat Island (UHI) warming effect as a function of population density, using thousands of pairs of temperature measuring stations within 150 km of each other. The results supported previous work which had shown that UHI warming increases logarithmically with population, with the greatest rate of warming occurring at the lowest population densities as population density increases.
Comparing Fort Collins with Boulder, and noting that Fort Collins grew faster, is an inadequate explanation for more warming in Fort Collins, about 40 miles north of Boulder. Boulder has a greenbelt designed to frustrate global warming, locally and globally. To fail to account for the effect of a massive green belt of 33,000 acres — more than double the size of the city’s 16,000 acres — is a failure of science. If Watts’s methodology misses such factors that slap an unbiased viewer in the face, you’ve gotta wonder what else he’s missing. If he can’t see a greenbelt twice the size of the city, surrounding the city, what else has he overlooked?
Plus there is this: Assume for a moment that he proves a heat island effect exists (a proposal unquestioned in meteorology and atmospheric sciences for a generation, by the way) — the question he’s seeking to prove is that urban heat islands skew official temperature readings enough to falsely indicate global warming. To skew measurements that include thousands of at-sea sensing devices, and rural areas around the world, there would have to be an massive effect that would be immediately obvious in the cities causing the effect: They would melt.
Flatirons rock formations, on Green Mountain, near Boulder, Colorado – Wikimedia photo by Jesse Varner
21 Comments | Clean Water Act, Climate change, climate_change, Environmental protection, Global warming, Green Politics, History, Natural history, Natural resources, Outdoor Recreation, Politics, Urbanization | Tagged: Boulder, Climate change, Colorado, Environmental protection, Fort Collins, Global warming, Green Politics, History, Politics, Research, UHI, Urban Heat Island, Urbanization | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
If they are honorable people, they wish they could take it back.
John Hinderaker at Powerline, November 23, 2009:
At the end of 2008, the scientists at East Anglia predicted that 2009 would be one of the warmest years on record:
On December 30, climate scientists from the UK Met Office and the University of East Anglia projected 2009 will be one of the top five warmest years on record. Average global temperatures for 2009 are predicted to be 0.4∞C above the 1961-1990 average of 14 ∫ C. A multiyear forecast using a Met Office climate model indicates a rapid return of global temperature to the long-term warming trend, with an increasing probability of record temperatures after 2009.
We know now that the alarmists’ prediction for 2009 didn’t come true. What’s interesting is that in January of this year, another climate alarmist named Mike MacCracken wrote to Phil Jones and another East Anglia climatologist, saying that their predicted warming may not occur . . .
Hinderaker quoting Anthony Watts’ chest thumping at Watts Up With That. In November, with cool weather in the local forecasts, they thought that 2009 would turn out to be a cold year, climate wise, and so they were demanding that climate scientists retract predictions and claims based on the data at hand. Watts was averaging his thermometer readings before they thermometers had been read.
Oops.
Here’s what actually happened:
NASA, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2010
2009 was tied for the second warmest year in the modern record, a new NASA analysis of global surface temperature shows. The analysis, conducted by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, also shows that in the Southern Hemisphere, 2009 was the warmest year since modern records began in 1880.
From NASA: "This map shows the 10-year average (2000-2009) temperature anomaly relative to the 1951-1980 mean. The largest temperature increases are in the Arctic and the Antarctic Peninsula. (Image credit: NASA/GISS)"
I’ve been hunting for retractions from Powerline and WUWT, but haven’t found them yet. Has anyone else seen the retractions from these guys, for accuracy’s sake, for the record? Hinderaker blogged the issue as recently as February 2, but mistook the continued warmness as a ‘lack of additional warming.’ Really. Hinderaker’s consistency in error is profound, with six or more posts on the issue since November 23, and not one noting his glaring error, each one assuming his error does not exist. It is a consistency striven for only by hobgoblins of no mind.
Hinderaker said in that November post:
Climate science is in its infancy, and every proposition is controversial. What climate scientists like those at East Anglia don’t know dwarfs what they do know. They can produce a model for every occasion, but are the models any good? If so, which one? One thing we know for sure is that they don’t generate reliable predictions. In every scientific field other than global warming, a scientific hypothesis that generates false predictions is considered disproved. When it comes to global warming, however, there is no such thing as falsification. Which is the ultimate evidence that the alarmist scientists are engaged in a political enterprise, not a scientific one.
Really? Political commentary on climate science is in its infancy, and every proposition is controversial, even those that should not be. What ill-informed and sometimes ignorant, belligerent pundits like those at Powerline and Watts Up don’t know dwarfs what they do know. They can’t produce a model for any occasion, but they will ask as if they had anything to add other than heckling, “are the models any good? If so, which one?” One thing we know for sure is that they don’t generate accuracy in reporting or trustworthy claims. In every scientific field other than global warming, a scientific hypothesis that generates false predictions is considered disproved. When it comes to global warming’s critics and outright denialists, however, there is no such thing as falsification. There is, so far, no such thing as an honorable confession of error, either. In political commentary, anyone who makes a prediction in late November that is exactly wrong when the numbers are tallied two months later, should have the grace to make a concession speech. These ravings, and failure to strive for accuracy when error is apparent, provide ultimate evidence that the contrarians and denialists are not scientists, and are engaged in a political enterprise, not a scientific one. Hinderaker and Watts give their readers voodoo science at its most voodoo. They could not fail to know what they post is hoax, even if they were sucked in at first.
Even if they read this and understand it’s true and accurate, I’ll wager you won’t see any errata notices from either Watts or Hinderaker.
More, I’ll wager no one would take such a wager, not even their defenders.
Do all climate contrarians all take their marching orders from the faxes and e-mails from the GOP National Committee?
Not one of the contrarian’s work could survive half the scrutiny Phil Jones or Michael Mann has had since their server was broken into.
P.S.: These guys at Powerline have a very twisted streak, you know?
“Steve [Hayward] is also the author of the annual Index of Leading Environmental Indicators. The fourteenth edition of the Index was published in April by the Pacific Research Institute to coincide with Earth Day and Lenin’s birthday; it is accessible in PDF here.”
Why is the Pacific Research Institute timing a report to coincide with Lenin’s birthday? Why would Hinderaker even joke about it? No scientist is checking that date. No Democrat is. It’s like these guys study the old communists and fascists, not as a learning exercise to find mistakes to avoid as Santayana urged, but to steal the methods of the Stalinists and fascists. More snark than sense, more snark than science, at Powerline and the Pacific Research Institute.
Ask others to join the campaign for accurate science:
43 Comments | Accuracy, Climate change, climate_change, Global warming, Hoaxes, Political Smear, Politics, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: Accuracy, Climate change, Global warming, Hoaxes, Political Smears, Politics, Powerline, Research, Research Errors, Voodoo history, Voodoo science, What's Up With That | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Here’s another point of science that will give rational people concern, and which cannot in any way be explained as “no problem” by stolen e-mails: Methane releases from the floor of the East Siberian Arctic are much larger than predicted.
Underwater methane gas plumes, Photo: NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program, 2013
Methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Frozen forms of methane dot the bottoms of our oceans. Warming of the oceans might be able to trigger an explosive thawing of the methane hydrates, as the frozen forms are known, seriously adding to our worldwide greenhouse gas problems.
Story here at Global Change. Science article on which that post is based, here.
Cool SONAR pictures of methane bubbling up from the floor of the Arctic Ocean, but scary once you realize what they are, at this vintage post at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub.
Is there any chance this research will merit a mention at the climate denialist blogs?
11 Comments | Climate change, climate_change, Geography - Physical, Global warming, Globalization, Green Politics, oceans, Science | Tagged: Climate change, geography, Global warming, Methane, Methane Hydrates, Ocean Acidification, Oceanography, oceans | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
RMS Titanic sank? No one alive today saw it sink. According to Salt's site, iIntercepted memoranda raise doubts about alleged boat's alleged sinking, and alleged engineering and design errors.
I don’t know about you but I’ve been absolutely riveted by the recent release of records from a break-in at the White Star line. No really, it’s not just a stream of bilge from people who may not be experts but reckon something. Frankly I can’t get enough of hearing about the same claim that one memo by one of the workers on the Titanic project clearly confirms the ship was ‘unsinkable’. This should finally put to rest the biggest hoax of the 20th century, that the Titanic sunk in the North Atlantic. Still there’s always someone who isn’t going to find a bit of a memo quoted out-of-context convincing so it’s worth recapping the clear evidence that the ’sinking’ of the Titanic is a scam.
Specifics, with applause by Anthony Watts and Joanne Nova, at Archaeoastronomy. (Well, no, not really; neither Watts nor Nova would link to such a reasonable site as Salt’s.)
10 Comments | Climate change, climate_change, Global warming, Hoaxes, Political Smear, Politics, Reason, Science | Tagged: Climate change, Environmental protection, Global warming, Hacked E-Mails, Hadley CRU, Hoaxes, Political Smear, Politics, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Yeah, I agree — but ask yourself, you who call yourselves “libertarian” or “skeptic,” why you’re not asking the same questions?
From the Murph Report, “Libertarians for junk science.” From a guy named Kevin Carson, a self-described anarchist — and voice in the wilderness.
He discusses the unthinking acceptance political libertarians and conservatives give to all stories against doing something about global warming, and about DDT’s problems.
Leave a Comment » | Climate change, climate_change, DDT, Environmental protection, Global warming, Green Politics, Politics, Rachel Carson | Tagged: Anarchism, Climate change, Cost of Green, DDT, Environmental protection, Global warming, Green Politics, Libertarianism, Rachel Carson, Science, Skepticism | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Actual observations of the world show global warming. Time-lapse photos of the destruction of the Columbia Glacier, in Alaska, by James Balog, should make any person start wondering how to control warming processes.
It’s a film documenting warming, a film that Joanne Nova and Anthony Watts hope you will never see.*
James Balog, at TEDS, explains the stuff in under 20 minutes:
From National Geographic’s site:
© 2008 James Balog/Extreme Ice Survey
This remarkable image sequence captures a series of massive calving events at Columbia Glacier near Valdez, Alaska. Composed of 436 frames taken between May and September of 2007, it shows the glacier rapidly retreating by about half a mile (1.6 kilometers), a volume loss of some 0.4 cubic miles (1.67 cubic kilometers) of ice or 400 billion gallons (1.5 trillion liters) of water.
The time-lapse was taken as part of the ongoing Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), an ambitious project to capture global warming-induced glacial retreat in the act. Beginning in December 2006, photographer James Balog and his colleagues set up 26 solar-powered cameras at glaciers in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, the Alps, and the Rocky Mountains. Each unit will take a photograph every daylight hour until fall 2009.
In 2008, Balog’s team began to return to each of the camera sites to collect images. In the end, they will have more than 300,000 images to analyze and stitch together to produce more dramatic videos like this one.
This kind of multiyear effort, says Balog, is necessary to “radically alter public perception of the global warming issue.”
Don’t miss: Extreme Ice a NOVA/National Geographic Television special airing on PBS March 24, 2009 at 8:00 p.m.
Resources:
_____________
* Am I too harsh? Go over to those blogs and see if you can find the WordPress pingback listed in the comments to those posts, for this post’s link to them. No? Then they’ve gone in and deleted the message. It’s automatic on WordPress, and it works wonderfully. But if they have the readership they claim, and if they are so certain of their views, why do they fear Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub?
9 Comments | Climate change, climate_change, Glaciers, Global warming, Politics, Science | Tagged: Alaska, Climate change, Columbia Glacier, Glaciers, Global warming, James Blalog | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Oh, it’s a piffle in the grand scheme of things. But it’s indicative of the inherent, apparently congenital dishonesty in warming contrarians and denialists.
At Joanne Nova’s site, I’ve dropped quite a few information bombs, in comments. Well, they treat information as if it would kill them, and I have hopes it might at least leak through into their minds, so I continued for a couple of days.
But it’s like “teaching the old pig to sing” joke. The punchline says that it’s a waste of time because the pig will never sing well, you can really knock yourself out trying, and it annoys the pig.
I got a ping on a follow-up message. Some guy commented that he couldn’t figure the site out, because after I post something with solid scientific information, they dismiss it, ignore it, and generally pick themselves up after running into the facts, and run the other way as if nothing had happened.
machina.sapiens
<!––>February 18th, 2010 at 10:04 pm<!––>
I just read through a large part of this turgid “debate”.
It’s astounding stuff.
Ed Darell provides case after case after case of detailed references from the scientific and legal debates and the rest of you run around squawking “show us the evidence” over and over again as if you don’t understand that what he is writing IS providing the evidence.
Do none of you actually speak english? Can’t you read? Do you not understand the concept of providing evidence, or are you not bothering to comprehend, just shouting him down? That’s about the only conclusion I can draw.
And then the person who runs this blog leaps in and bans people for refusing to agree with her… Well, I suppose it’s her blog and her ball and if you don’t play by her rules, you can just go home…
Unbelievable, really.
I should have known a kommitted kommissar like Nova couldn’t let my earlier post go without twisting it. She responded:
Joanne Nova said:
Joanne Nova
–>February 19th, 2010 at 2:54 am<!––>Machina,
I see you’re faking it right from the start. If you’d read the whole “debate” you’d know that Ed has been pinged for many things, including relying on the PSBG, and even had to apologize for baseless insults.Ed:
““OK, I recognize that any cause of warming would melt glaciers, change weather patterns, and shift crops etc etc. None of these things is evidence that carbon is the cause of that warming. I was mixing up cause and effect. Point taken. Sorry for calling you drunk or dense or suggesting you have a mental disease.”
Time to let the pig go back to its mud, eh? That wasn’t my intent. I copied her words, but noted where I disagreed (you can read it here, perhaps, if she lets it stand.)
So I responded:
<!—->: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
<!––>February 19th, 2010 at 6:02 am<!––>I clearly should have been more clear.
I didn’t mean to imply mental disease where it doesn’t exist. However, denialism may well be a symptom of disease. Warming denialism is like all tinfoil hattery, not so much a political stand as a symptom of something underlying. Mental disease? Perhaps.
Yes, any cause of global warming would melt glaciers, change weather patterns, and shift crops. None of this is, alone, evidence that carbon causes the warming. However, there is no more likely culprit than the set of greenhouse gases that cause such global warming. Cause and effect are not necessarily the same thing — the scientific evidence points to the increase in human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases as creating the mess we’re heading into.
Sorry for calling you drunk if you’re not. Sorry for implying you have disease if you don’t. That leaves only genuine skepticism, not politically motivated, or stupidity, or evil intent. Drunk or dense might be the better and more polite excuse, but Nova doesn’t believe it.
I got here on a link showing the astounding lies of Christopher Monckton about Rachel Carson, Jackie Kennedy and DDT. Since I can’t say Monckton was drunk or diseased, and since he lacks the science or history chops to be an informed skeptic, we must assume him to be evil. Why Nova promotes his statements escapes me.
I apologized for baseless insults, but cannot apologize for those with firm foundation.
As you can see from the note on moderation, they pounced on my remarks and closed them off from view.
YODA – Moderator
<!––>February 19th, 2010 at 6:37 am<!––>
Ed Darrell,
Your latest comment has been put into moderation. Jo will review it and make a decision accordingly
YODA – Moderator
If only it were Yoda instead of someone short, with a desire to be magical, but no light sabre or serious Jedi training.
They can’t defend Monckton’s insults of America and Jackie Kennedy, nor his ignorant insults of Rachel Carson. They know that. Censorship is the only way out for them.
Is that also true for warming? Nova doesn’t encourage discussion in any fashion. (It is rather sobering to see so many willing to give up their fleeces and follow along, though, isn’t it?)
My sole defender said:
machina.sapiens
<!––>February 19th, 2010 at 9:08 am<!––>A couple of responses – although I have no intention of engaging in this discussion on a sustained basis. Life is too short. I don’t have the patience – unlike Ed Darrell, who seems to have limitless reserves of patience and politeness in dealing with the frequently abusive and nonsensical responses to his calm, respectful, logical, and evidence-based comments.
Farmer Dave says that I “seem a little upset” – an interesting rhetorical trope – place yourself in a superior, condescending position and devalue your opponent’s words by implying that they are the result of excessive emotion rather than rationality – it’s a flavour of ad hominem technique, I suppose. That trope certainly seems to get a substantial use in this arena – maybe it’s in someone’s “Big book of hints on how to derail discussion when you have no actual arguments” – like the one that goes “ignore any evidence that anyone provides and just keep chanting ’show us the evidence’”.
You (jonova)say that
Ed has been pinged for many things, including relying on the PSBG, and even had to apologize for baseless insults.
(I presume you mean the PBSG) – I guess if relying on the statements of actual scientific bodies is a justification for blocking someone, i shouldn’t be expecting rationality… I haven’t read all of the discussion – but I see no evidence of you blocking anyone other than people who disagree with you, no matter how abusive and irrelevant your supporters get. When discussion gets mildly robust, it always leaves scope to fabricate those sort of charges against those who disagree with you, while ignoring the sins of your own supporters. I guess it’s easy to get away with that kind of patent intellectual dishonesty when you’re only singing to the choir.
Roy Hogue, one of the main sty denizens there, claimed that nameless and faceless European bureaucrats were threatening his freedom. I asked him how, and here’s his latest tally of his loss of freedom, showing up just after my latest banning:
It’s now quite illegal to sell or install CFCs in the United States. It’s a federal crime with penalties attached.
So there you have it, folks. If you allow the warming warnings to take effect and let us try to make cleaner air to save our planet, you’ll have to pay the incredibly stiff penalty of . . . changing your refrigerant.
That’s a penalty any of us should be happy to pay. That these guys see that as a serious infringement of their freedom only demonstrates how blinded they are, perhaps by the slipping tinfoil hats.
Are we burning that bridge? With a bit of sadness, perhaps. They may need that bridge to save their tails someday.
It’s unlikely they’d know it, though.
My comment is still in “moderation.” When telling the truth needs to be “moderated,” the problem isn’t with the facts of the matter.
If they can’t stand the heat, maybe they should let the policy makers do something about the warming, eh?
Update: I’m up early, gotta do some hard thinking about Woodrow Wilson for a seminar today, and I find this posted over at Nova’s site:
<!—->:
<!––>February 20th, 2010 at 3:57 pm<!––>Ed Darrell, I’m getting help to manage the hundreds of comments coming in. We’re still working out a system, so your comment has been released from moderation.
You however still appear irrational.
I think I have to agree with Alexander Pope on that issue:
All seems infected that the infected spy, As all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.
Nova again:
You make assumptions we have asked you back up:
“the scientific evidence points to the increase in human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases as creating the mess we’re heading into.You cannot provide any other evidence other than climate simulations, and I have already explained why these are inadequate. We need empirical evidence.
I make assumptions? I make assumptions?
I don’t assume, as your prophet Monckton claims, that Jack Kennedy came back from the dead to appoint his “good friend,” William Ruckelshaus, to head the EPA, an agency created seven years after Kennedy’s death, as Nova apparently does (Nova hasn’t defended any of the DDT insanity from Monckton — she can’t, of course, so she’s trying to deflect). I don’t assume anything, except some degree of intelligence and civility in most people — an assumption Nova is doing her best to batter.
Nova dismisses out of hand the papers by Australian scientists showing how and why Australia’s wildfires are results of greenhouse-gas-caused climate change. If all the evidence is ruled out of bounds, then she’s right.
Try to post a serious argument there.
Remember, my sole point was that Monckton can’t be trusted, a claim I make based on his astounding and continuing falsehoods about DDT, malaria and the environmental movement. Nova contests none of that, but accuses me of not providing evidence to other points.
Were I to be so cruel as Monckton, I’d ask whether she had to chew through the leather restraints to post that. But I won’t.
Before you can post again, please explain:
1. Are you still calling us “deniers”
She’s defending a guy who regularly calls scientists, Nobel winners, and anyone who questions anything he does “bed wetters” and is proud of it.
Am I pointing out you deny the evidence, Nova? Damn straight.
Does that make you a “denier?” I think it’s indicative of a syndrome. Over here in the U.S., when public figures get caught like that, they often head off to an alcohol abuse treatment program. Among the first steps of abuse correction is confession.
If I call you a “denier,” where does that description go awry, Ms. Nova? You won’t accept the science I post, and now you won’t let me post unless I swear fealty to your odd brand of nonsensescience.
Why should anyone regard you as a major denier, lost in depths of denialism? Where is there any indication that you accept any part of science?
If “yes” then you may not post again since this is delusional as you cannot provide any evidence we deny and have not acknowledged that your past effort to provide evidence was woefully inadequate.
I was unaware pigs wanted to sing. I still see no evidence of it. It’s that denialism thing, I think. A pig denying it is Sus domesticus might be deluded into thinking it should be able to sing.
Nova’s explanation for why the Australian scientists were wrong about wildfires in Australia was an answer along the lines of “everyone knows” Australian fires are caused by Smokey the Bear’s overmanagement of wildlands. No citation to anything at all, not even a newspaper article.
And she accuses me of providing no evidence.
Jack Rhodes explained the difficulties of coaching champion debate teams. First a team has to learn to beat the average teams. Then they must learn to beat the really good teams. Finally, and most difficult, they must learn to defeat the really bad teams. In the logical and evidence-laden world of intercollegiate debate at the time, a really bad team’s disorganized thoughts and fumbling arguments could draw good debaters off the track.
Nova’s tried to draw me off the track there. She’s demonstrating a moral failure in her support of the serial and continuing falsehoods of Christopher Monckton. Wholly apart from whether I could offer evidence of global warming to pass Nova’s jaundiced eye, it is a moral failure of Nova to support the falsehoods of the man, promote them as truths, and then engage in attacks on those who point out the errors.
It’s not an evidence failure we see at Nova’s blog so much as a failure of backbone, a moral failure to distinguish the dross that can mislead the masses from the gold that we need for policy.
I’m assuming Nova’s bright enough to make that distinction, of course. She could shuffle off to an evidence abuse program and claim bright light addiction or somesuch. But if we assume she’s not crazy or stupid, then her failing here is purely moral. She refuses to entertain the idea that she might be wrong in any sense, crazy, stupid, or just not yet sufficiently evidenced. If we believe her that far, moral failing is the only alternative.
If Nova wants to be seen as a serious non-denialist, she ought to act that way.
If “not” then talk of deniers applies to some other group, it’s not appropriate here. Go talk there.
2. You may apologise for wasting my time, and posting comments of sub-par logic along with baseless insults.
I regret your moderation is unfair, your characterizations of me inaccurate, and your science so poor as to be practically non-existent. Should I be sorry for that? Okay, I’m sorry your moderation is unfair, your characterizations wrong, and your beliefs unfounded.
I don’t think I should be apologizing for you, Joanne. You have to do that yourself.
You may not post again until we resolve this. Unfortunately I have to discriminate against the mentally deficient who throw insults. There is only one of me, I’m trying to lift standards on logic and reason and cannot offer free therapy for those who are simply, possibly due to no fault of their own, unable to reason.
I can and will post freely wherever reasonable discussion is obtainable, Joanne. I regret that is not your site. Alas, again, I cannot do your apologies for you.
Dear Readers, you may head over to Nova’s site and try to educate the hard-headed Aussies and others there. Don’t set your sites on long life on those boards. I gather most of the rational Aussies avoid the place. I wonder where sensible Aussies hang out? [Roy Hogue? Are you a troll or do you have serious questions? If the latter, post the questions here. I’ll work to answer them.]
Joanne Nova may wish to decorate Millard Fillmore for his contributions to sanitary science in the White House, especially his personal plumbing of the first bathtub there. It’s her right. It’s not history, it’s not science, it’s not accurate, it’s not appropriate. But it’s her right.
4 Comments | Clean Air Act, Climate change, climate_change, DDT, denialism, Global warming, History, Political Smear, Politics, pollution, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: Climate change, Global warming, Joanne Nova, Monckton | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
From the introduction to Colorado River Basin Water Management: Evaluating and Adjusting to Hydroclimatic Variability, Water Science and Technology Board (WSTB), National Academies Press (2007):
The 20th century saw a trend of increasing mean temperatures across the Colorado River basin that has continued into the early 21st century. There is no evidence that this warming trend will dissipate in the coming decades; many different climate model projections point to a warmer future for the Colorado River region.
Modeling results show less consensus regarding future trends in precipitation. Several hydroclimatic studies project that significant decreases in runoff and streamflow will accompany increasing temperatures. Other studies, however, suggest increasing future flows, highlighting the uncertainty attached to future runoff and streamflow projections. Based on analysis of many recent climate model simulations, the preponderance of scientific evidence suggests that warmer future temperatures will reduce future Colorado River streamflow and water supplies. Reduced streamflow would also contribute to increasing severity, frequency, and duration of future droughts.
2 Comments | Climate change, climate_change, Conservation, Cost of Green, Deserts, Environmental protection, Geography - Physical, geology, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Joanne Nova is, I gather, a former television personality in Australia now blogging away against science and the study of climate change at JoNova. Here’s how far off the track she is: She’s been sucked in by Monckton, as some great scientist and hero — he whose biggest achievements are to call scientists “bedwetters” and attack the reputations of famous dead women (what is it about Monckton and dead women?).
Her latest post is a hoot. She’s claiming that the case for global warming is coming apart. She illustrates it with this PhotoShop™ masterpiece (note the “JoNova” in the lower lefthand corner, and note it well):
JoNova defaces photo of Glen Canyon Dam. Original photo copyright by Wild Nature Images.
Glen Canyon Dam poses problems for serious advocates of environnmental protection for many reasons, not the least being the death of Glen Canyon. This dam represents one of the greatest losses of the environmental movement. That’s not why Nova chose the photos, I’m sure — I’d be surprised if she could find Glen Canyon on a map, and I’m all but certain she’s clueless about the controversy about the dam (don’t even wonder whether she’s ever read Ed Abbey).
Regardless where one stands on the issues around Glen Canyon Dam, one cannot look at this photo without seeing the white stripe from the water behind the dam, running about 50 feet up the canyon walls.
Check out the original, copyrighted photo here, at WildNatureImages.com (and maybe buy a copy — it’s a great photo of the dam, Lake Powell and the area; no bluer sky anywhere). I presume that, even with the huge “JoNova” on it, Nova will allow free duplication of her original work; but why didn’t she credit the guy who took the photo (Ron Niebrugge) and the people who put it on the internet for her (WildNatureImages.com)? Update: Nova is giving credit, now.
The original, without comment, is at once more beautiful, more awe-striking, and more accurate a portrayal of the effects of climate than Nova’s doctored version:
Glen Canyon Dam, photo by Ron Niebrugge, at WildNatureImages.com. Displayed here with express written permission.
See, climate change is thought to be one of the culprits for that white line. Glen Canyon Dam is in straits right now, as is the Colorado River Compact that created the legal justification for constructing the dam, because precipitation in the mountains where the Colorado River is born has fallen dramatically in the past couple of decades — and Lake Powell has shrunk to a vestige of its former self, of its planned extent, of the extent hoped for in cooler times.
Lake Powell's drop, circa 2008, photo by Marco Ammannati via National Parks Traveler. Caption from National Parks Traveler: "At Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, years of drought, possibly an indicator of climate change, have revealed Lake Powell's bathtub walls. Spring runoff, however, could soon make those bathtub walls vanish."
JoNova uses a photograph showing the harms of climate change, to claim that climate change does not occur.
Is this the stupidest anti-climate change statement ever made?
Offer your candidates for dumber or stupider claims below. It’s time we started counting and cataloging.
More:
25 Comments | Accuracy, Climate change, climate_change, Cost of Green, Geography - Physical, Global warming, Green Politics, Politics, Science, Voodoo science | Tagged: Climate change, Cost of Green, denialism, Glen Canyon Dam, Green Politics, JoNova, Lake Powell, Politics, Science, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Which of these would be accurate in showing the insanity, but not so sharp as to raise the hackles of the climate contrarians?
Read these stories, and tell me.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) noted the delicate condition of the Antarctic with regard to its two main industries, fishing and tourism. IPCC AR4 noted that the tourism industry takes steps to protect Antarctic environments made more vulnerable by melting. (Footnote here; actual flyer here, assessment document here in Microsoft Word .doc format)
Contrarians come unglued, here at ClimateQuotes.com, and here at Air Vent.
It’s clear that the contrarians don’t have much experience in heavy documentation. If you follow the links they provide, you quickly get to the paper provided by the tourist industry noting their precautions to prevent contamination, provided to meet a request by scientists from the Australian team, and based on information well vetted to the point that it includes substantial excerpts from what appears to be a peer-reviewed journal on the types of solutions suitable for decontaminating foreign boots in the Antarctic (Polar Record, vol. 41, no. 216, Jan. 2005, p. 39-45; it is actually the official journal of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge, UK). There is astounding and commendable attention to detail, much more than the contrarians can grok, it appears.
More troubling to the Boy Scout in me is the contrarians’ contempt for what is, really, Leave No Trace Camping carried to an Antarctic tourist stop. This is part of the environment protection credo of the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and it is sound policy that everyone should be teaching their children.
What is wrong with that? Why do the contrarians mock wise policies? Why do they make false claims against what amounts to good Scouting?
Contratians disapprove of the ethics of environmental stewardship?
One implicit complaint is that the footnote does not provide evidence of damage from climate change, in the Antarctic. It’s clear that the critics have not followed the footnote path to see why the boot cleaning poster and directive were issued, nor to see what is the research or official government action that prompted the tourist companies to implement the procedure.
It appears in a section of the IPCC reports on effects of warming on industries in affected areas. Only two industries are noted in the Antarctic, fishing and tourism. After establishing the increased chance of problem organisms, including micro-organisms, showing up in Arctic and Antarctic areas as the areas warm, and after noting two plagues that killed penguins recently, from micro-organisms, the IPCC paper notes that concern to prevent such tragedies have so far required only boot decontamination, and it offers a link to the flyer provided by an Antarctic tour operators group.
Got that? To show that the tour operators are affected, IPCC cited the flyer put out by the tour operators showing how and why they were changing their operations. It’s a minor, almost trivial point.
At no point did IPCC’s report claim this procedure as evidence of warming, or the effects of warming. So the claims of the contrarians and denialists are completely off base, as they’d recognize except for their own shouting for the lynching of science to proceed.
Criticism of IPCC for noting the good stewardship techniques used in the Antarctic comprises more political smear than scientific enlightenment, by a huge factor. Voodoo science from the contrarians begets voodoo criticism.
Contrarians lack wisdom in posing this complaint of theirs. This is one more point IPCC got right, factually and ethically. IPCC should be commended for that.
Wall of Shame (update added on February 7)
Outlets that cite the boot reference, falsely or stupidly, as some sort of flaw in the IPCC report, and thereby demonstrate malevolent intentions, and not scientific (“malice” for you Times v. Sullivan fans):
4 Comments | Boy Scouts of America, Climate change, climate_change, Ethics, Girl Scouts, Global warming, Hoaxes, Natural history, Natural resources, Political Smear, Science | Tagged: Antarctic, Boot Cleaning, Boy Scouts, Climate change, Ethics, Girl Scouts, Global warming, Green Politics, IPCC, Leave No Trace, Political Smear | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, another of America’s great legacy of great newspapers:
The decade that ended in 2009 was the warmest on record, NASA reported earlier this month. It displaced the decade of the 1990s as the warmest ever. The 1990s displaced the 1980s.
Last year was the second-warmest since 1880, when modern temperature measurements began. The warmest year on record was 2005. All of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1998. Perhaps you’re starting to see a pattern.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Open Mind, who also notes that the last decade was the warmest ever.
Leave a Comment » | Clean Air Act, Climate change, climate_change, Global warming, Green Politics, Science | Tagged: Climate change, Cost of Green, Global warming, Green Politics, Politics, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
It really is that bad. Climate science denialists now attack any information simply for not being what they want it to be. Lysenko’s Ghost smiles broadly.
Anthony Watts is just the most prominent of the bloggers making hoax charges of error and worse in the fourth report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), because of a footnote that cites a rock climbing magazine.
Here’s the trouble for Watts: There is no indication that the citation is in error in any way. Watts’s move is more fitting of King George III’s campaign against Ben Franklin’s lightning rods, the prosecution of John Peter Zenger, the pre-World War II campaign against Einstein’s work because he was born a Jew, or the hoary old Red Channels campaign against Texas history told by John Henry Faulk. It’s as bad as the Texas State Board of Education’s attack on Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Watts’ and others’ complaint is simply that Climbing magazine’s story on the worldwide retreat of glaciers suitable for climbing is not published in a juried science journal.
In other words, they indict the science, not because it’s wrong — they have no evidence to counter it — but because it’s too American Patriot correct Jewish left Texan mistakenly thought to be political well-known, too accessible, (small “d”) democratically-reported.
And of course, any comment that points that out at Watts’s blog goes into long-term “moderation,” keeping it from the light of day in the best tradition of the Crown’s defense of Gov. Cosby’s misadministration of New York (see “John Peter Zenger”). Watts said in a quote that should have been attributed to the Daily Telegraph:
The IPCC’s remit is to provide an authoritative assessment of scientific evidence on climate change.
In its most recent report, it stated that observed reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa was being caused by global warming, citing two papers as the source of the information.
However, it can be revealed that one of the sources quoted was a feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on the mountainsides around them.
The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying for the equivalent of a master’s degree, at the University of Berne in Switzerland that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps.
The revelations, uncovered by The Sunday Telegraph, have raised fresh questions about the quality of the information contained in the report, which was published in 2007.
It comes after officials for the panel were forced earlier this month to retract inaccurate claims in the IPCC’s report about the melting of Himalayan glaciers.
By those standards, Watts’s own readers should eschew his blog — it’s not peer reviewed science by any stretch, and Watts isn’t an established authority in climate science (he’s not even working for an advanced degree). Consistency isn’t a virtue or concern among climate change denialists. Watt’s entire modus operandi is much more anecdotal than the story in Climbing, which was written by a physicist/climber who studies climate change in the world’s mountains.
And did you notice? They’re whining about research done by a scientist in pursuit of a degree, complaining about the second citation. That’s the exaclty kind of research that they claim the magazine article is not. Their complaint is, it appears, that a scientist in pursuit of education is not the right “kind” of person to do climate research. It’s the chilling sort of bigotry that we spent so much time in the 20th century fighting against. In the 21st century, though, it appears one can still get away with demonizing knowledge, education and research, part of the campaign to indict “elitism,” the same sort of elitism aspired to by America’s founders. Too much of the criticism against scientists involved in documenting global warming is the cheap bigotry the critics claim to find in science, falsely claimed in my view.
Topsy-turvy.
And the glaciers? Yeah, the evidence tends to show they are in trouble. Those Himalayan glaciers? The IPCC report was accurate in everything except the speed at which the glaciers decline — they should be with us for another three centuries, not just 50 years, if we can reduce warming back to 1990s levels (oddly, denialists rarely deal with the facts of accelerating warming, preferring to point to a local snowstorm as a rebuttal of all knowledge about climate).
Oh, and the research? The author of the story in Climbing magazine is Mark Bowen. Dr. Bowen’s Ph.D. is in physics from MIT. He’s a climber, and he researches climate change on the world’s highest mountains. His 2005 book, Thin Ice, focused tightly on what we can learn about climate from the world’s highest mountains. Bowen is the expert Anthony Watts would like to be.
Cover of Mark Bowen’s book defending climate science, “Censoring Science.”
Bowen’s newest book: Censoring Science: Inside the political attack on James Hansen and the truth of global warming. Watts doesn’t want anyone to read that book. It is easy to imagine Watt’s s attack is, he hopes, pre-emptive, against Bowen’s book.
I’ll wager Watts hasn’t read the article in Climbing, and didn’t know who Bowen was when he launched his attack, though. The denials of bias coming out of the denialists’ camp will be interesting to watch.
Let the denialists roll out the rope far enough, they’ll inevitably hang themselves.
More:
Do something for freedom: Spread the news
35 Comments | Accuracy, Climate change, climate_change, Ethics, Geography - Physical, Glaciers, Global warming, History, Journalism, Physics, Political Smear, Politics, Science | Tagged: Accuracy, Climate change, denialism, geography, Glaciers, Global warming, Hoaxes, Physics, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Australia is looking for a scientist to head up the next round of Australia’s reports to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
But who would want a job that pays nothing and brings a great deal of grief? Crikey notes that scientists, especially Australian scientists, get slandered and libeled daily by climate change denialists. Not to mention the death threats.
That fat pay the denialists keep claiming comes to the scientists, and urges them to misreport the data?
The only remuneration IPCC scientists get – as a quick check of last week’s ad would have made clear — is travel costs and living expenses while they are at IPCC meetings. The IPCC work is on top of their day jobs as academics and researchers.
That’s right, ladies and gentleman: Climate Denialist Extraordinaire Christopher Monckton profits from his obnoxious and error-filled lectures more than the guys who do the heavy lifting.
You know that denialists won’t apply to do the job. Most of us suspect they don’t have the courage of their convictions to do it, but there’s another problem: Very few of them are qualified. They don’t do science.
Bookmark the story. Remind the denialists of it from time to time.
5 Comments | Climate change, climate_change, denialism, Global warming, Green Politics, History, Political Smear, Politics, Research, Science | Tagged: Climate change, denialism, Global warming, Green Politics, History, Political Smears, Politics, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Especially since they purloined the e-mails from the Hadley Climate Research Unit (CRU), climate change denialists get bolder and bolder about making wilder and wilder statements of disinformation.
For example, our old friend Anthony Watts now makes criminal charges in his headlines, that scientists altered data to reflect the opposite of what their research found and then lied about it — but read the story, about Himalayan glaciers. Watts quotes a story with a bad headline from The Daily Mail, in which a scientist tells how important scientisits consider the situation in the Himalayas, with glacier decline. There is no confession of any wrongdowing, but Watt’s headlines it “Scientist admits IPCC usied fake data to influence policy makers.” There’s no confession. Were it so wildly inaccurate, wouldn’t Watts post the science that rebuts the IPCC claim?
Anyway, Dale Husband takes a harder look at some of the denialist claims. Nils-Axel Morner claims that, contrary to all measures and the actual submersion of islands, sea level rises do not occur. Morner testified to that point to the British government in 2005, according to Dale Husband.
Can you detect the “trick” Morner used to deny sea level rise in his graph?
Morner's "data trick" to show no sea level rise, 2005
Morner’s work is the basis of Anthony Watts’ and Christopher Monckton’s claims that the Maldives are not sinking, and probably the “science” basis for almost all claims that the oceans do not rise. You gotta follow the footnotes.
Good heavens. Is Morner really the intellectual basis of this part of the denialists’ denial? This isn’t an area I’ve followed closely. My experience is that if Monckton cites him, he’s probably wrong. But Morner is the major author on sea levels in the denialist compilation of what they claim is not crank science.
Maybe the denialists should just take up yoga. If you stand on your head to look at the charts, they all look different, and the charts showing the temperature rising aren’t quite so scary.
28 Comments | Climate change, climate_change, denialism, Global warming, History, oceans, Politics | Tagged: Climate change, denialism, Global warming, oceans, Politics, Science, Sea Level Rise | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
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Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 